God's Word Became Our Poetry and Sang within Us: Facilitating Contextualisation through Indigenous Poetry

Abstract

Many cultures around the world esteem poetry as a medium for communicating truth and preserving traditions, and which can impact peoples’ cognitive, affective and volitional dimensions of life. This exploratory project discusses the necessity of effectively contextualising theology for indigenous churches, and the inherently beneficial nature of poetry to help achieve this process. Research includes the study of relevant missiological literature and material acquired by questionnaire. This questionnaire was completed by linguistic field workers involved in Bible translation and by their professional colleagues. The findings of this research indicate that indigenous poetry is inherently valued in a variety of cultures and can be appropriately applied by both indigenous poets and cross-cultural workers to facilitate the contextualisation of Bible translation.